The Barcelona election

This weekend a conference hall alongside the Nou Camp Stadium in Barcelona will host a contest that demonstrates that at some sports clubs the primary motor of decision-making is political, not economic.

The members of Barcelona Football Club will vote on Saturday for their next president. Barcelona is not the only club controlled by its fans. In Spain, Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, among others, are also member associations rather than companies. In Germany, 15 of the 18 Bundesliga clubs are governed by the “50 + 1” rule, which means the members own half the club plus one share.

“It’s a good system for the fans,” said Richard Fitzpatrick, a Barcelona-based Irish journalist whose books include “El Clasico” about the Barça-Real Madrid rivalry. “Compared to, say, Arsenal, ticket prices are one-tenth. They don’t have oil sheikhs or Russian billionaires swooping in to buy the club. But it makes for political instability, anxiety and stress at the club.”

The 109,637 Barcelona club members have a choice of four candidates. There are two clear favorites, Josep Bartomeu, the incumbent, and Joan Laporta, who was president from 2003 to 2010.

It’s like a U.S. presidential race

“It’s like a U.S. presidential race,” Fitzpatrick said.

The contest is surrounded by a media frenzy. There are television debates between the candidates. There are polls – which both Laporta and Bartomeu have led this week. The two Barcelona sports dailies, Sport and El Mundo Deportivo, as well as Marca, their Madrid rival, dedicate daily sections to the vote.

The contest resembles elections in other ways. There is personal animosity between the two leading candidates. Yet the differences between the platforms are small and often cosmetic. Laporta’s Catalan nationalism would have little practical impact on the running of the club.

At Barcelona, democracy has also become a rich man’s game. After presidents at Real Madrid and Barcelona pushed their clubs toward long-term ruin in the pursuit of short-term success, Barça now requires each candidate to give bank guarantees equal to 15 per cent of the club’s revenue — or €75 million for this election. The candidates must be able to pay for their mistakes.

The club is also clearly worried that the vote will not even draw the 54.9 percent turnout of the last U.S. presidential election. The voting will take place over 14 hours at a conference hall next to the Nou Camp Stadium. Members can bring guests to enjoy the free food and drink and the entertainments the club is laying on. These include activities to keep children occupied, promotions for some of the club’s other professional teams – in basketball, handball, roller hockey and indoor soccer — and the chance for fans to have their photos taken with the Liga, Copa del Rey and Champions League trophies the club won last season. Those trophies are Bartomeu’s greatest electoral weapon.

Bartomeu was never elected president. As vice president, he inherited the position in January 2014 when Sandro Rosell resigned amid a string of financial scandals. In January, when he announced that the elections would be brought forward a year, Bartomeu looked not so much a lame duck as a dead one. On the field, the team was sputtering under Luis Enrique, a coach Bartomeu appointed. Off the field it was under siege from Spanish prosecutors and UEFA, the governing body of world soccer. But Lionel Messi, the club’s talisman, rediscovered his best form after a difficult 18 months, the team gelled and swept to glory in the glorious style that symbolizes the club.

The club’s latest era of success began under Laporta, who was president from 2003 to 2010. During his reign, Messi made his debut. Laporta appointed first Frank Rijkaard, who ended the club’s six-year trophy drought and led it to the Champions league, only the club’s second ever triumph in Europe’s most prestigious competition. In 2008, Laporta promoted the club’s youth coach, Pep Guardiola, who led the club to three more Spanish titles and two more Champions League victories.

Joan Laporta. Photo by EPA

Just before the end of his term, Laporta, always sensitive to a popular gesture, made Johan Cruyff an honorary vice president of the club. As manager from 1988-96, Cruyff created the blueprint for the Barcelona style that reached its apotheosis under Guardiola, who had been given his Barcelona debut as a young player by Cruyff. When Rosell was elected president he quickly stripped Cruyff of the honour. Guardiola resigned at the end of the season, after leading the club to more trophies. Cruyff and Guardiola, who is at Bayern, have both intimated that they support Laporta. The hope that Guardiola could return is Laporta’s greatest electoral weapon.

Laporta did not run for re-election in 2010. Instead he founded a separatist party and ran in the Catalan elections. It might seem perverse to found a new party when Catalan politics was already dominated by a separatist coalition, Convergence and Union, or CiU. But, said Jordi Punti, a Catalan novelist: “In the CiU, Laporta would not have been a major player.”

Laporta’s party, Catalan Solidarity for Independence, won just four seats in 2010. Laporta served two years in the Catalan parliament before quitting. For Laporta, as for many Catalans, FC Barcelona is part of the same agenda.

Barcelona FC has been for a long time a substitute for nationalism

“Barcelona FC has been for a long time a substitute for nationalism,” Punti said.

Catalan independence would destroy FC Barcelona. If Catalonia ever does become independent, it is hard to believe the rest of Spain, or UEFA, the governing body of European soccer, would let the club stay in La Liga. For now, Laporta can court nationalist voters knowing he won’t have to deal with the reality.

Catalan nationalism is one of many notes struck by the club’s slogan “Mes que un club,” (“more than a club”). The club’s website says the phrase has a significance “beyond what belongs in the realm of sport.” It continues: “For many years, this commitment specifically referred to Catalan society.” But then the article covers its bets. It adds, first, that, during the years of the Franco dictatorship, “outside of Catalonia, in many parts of Spain, Barça also became symbolic of democracy and anti-centralism.” Finally it asserts that in “times of globalisation,” “Barça has extended its social commitment to the rest of the planet.”

In recent years this pride has begun to look like hubris.

“There is a danger if you set yourself up on a moral principle that says ‘we are more than a club’ because we represent principles other clubs do not stand for,” said Jimmy Burns, an Anglo-Spanish writer based in Catalonia whose books include ‘Barça: A People’s Passion. “That’s why Barça has been very vulnerable in recent times.”

The problems revolve around the financial dealings of the club, its leaders and its players and also in the way it cashes in on its image as “more than a club.”

For more than a century, Barcelona refused to have a sponsor’s name on its uniforms. Barcelona was more than a club. The shirt was more than a shirt. It was a symbol. The club could not cash in on the valuable space over its players’ hearts. Laporta broke the taboo in a cunning way. He bought a sponsor. Barcelona agreed to pay €1.5 million to put the UNICEF logo on its shirt. Six months after becoming president, Rosell evicted UNICEF from that prime real estate and sold it instead to Qatar, a country where he had business interests, in a deal worth, in all, €45 million a year.

“Some people are against advertising a country that does not respect human rights,” Punti said.

Laporta has said he would return to UNICEF. In the televised debate on July 14, one of the also-ran candidates, Augusti Benedito, complained that Qatar was also sponsoring ISIS. Bartomeu has wriggled, hinting at dropping all sponsors and also talking of switching to an “Asian technology company.”

The symbolism of the shirt seems to be a more important election issue than the financial scandals that brought down Rosell era and loom over Bartomeu.

Sandro Rossel. Photo by EPA

The club remains scarred by the way it lost Alfredo di Stefano and Luís Figo to Real Madrid. In 1953, Barça thought it signed di Stefano only for the Argentina-born midfielder to end up at Real Madrid, the club backed by General Franco. Between 1956 and 1960, di Stefano led Real to victory in the first five European Cups, a competition Barcelona would not win until 1992.

Figo, a Portuguese midfielder, was revered in his five seasons in Barcelona. But in 2000, Florentino Pérez won election as Real Madrid president in part by promising to activate the $60 million buyout clause in Figo’s contract, which represented a world record transfer fee. When Pérez made the offer, Figo, to the horror of Barcelona fans, agreed to move, ushering in Madrid’s Galatico era. In 2001, Figo was voted World Player of the Year. In 2002, he led Real to victory in the Champions league. For Barcelona fans, defeats by Real Madrid in the transfer market hurt more than losses in El Clasico.

Former Real Madrid and Portugal soccer star Luis Figo. Photo by EPA

That history helps explain the recent scandals.

The first stems from the signing of the Brazilian striker, Neymar, who Real was also pursuing, in 2013. Barcelona said it paid a total of €57.1 million (or $62.5 million) for the player. Instead it seems to have broken the bank to beat Real. Estimates of what the deal will actually cost the club run as high as €160 million. Rosell and Bartomeu are both being pursued by Spanish prosecutors who charge that, by under-reporting the deal, Barcelona evaded taxes.

The second scandal involves the signing of 10 foreign youngsters. UEFA found that the deals breached the rules designed to protect players under the age of 18. The club is serving a transfer ban. It can sign new players, but they cannot appear for the club until January.

Bartomeu has blamed Tito Vilanova, the team’s coach at the time of the Neymar deal, for that scandal. Bartomeu made the accusation after Vilanova died of cancer in 2014. At the start of January, a few days after Barcelona lost its appeal against the UEFA transfer ban, Bartomeu fired the club’s general manager, Andoni Zubizarreta, making him the scapegoat for that scandal.

For the third scandal, the blame clearly lies elsewhere, at the feet of the player who symbolizes Barcelona. Messi, an Argentine who joined Barcelona at the age of 11 and is La Masia’s greatest student, faces trial over accusations that he, and his father, evaded €4.1m in taxes between 2007 and 2009.

Yet it is not clear that any of these embarrassments are electoral liabilities for Bartomeu. The fans cherish La Masia, they love Neymar and they worship Messi. The Zubizarreta firing came a day after a 1-0 home loss to mediocre Real Sociedad, the low point of the season that ended in triple triumph.

“The fans are only worried about results on the field,” said Fitzpatrick. “The aren’t interested in who wins the elections — these are middle-aged men in suits.”

The need for bank guarantees means they are rich, middle-aged men in suits. Laporta started as a fan advocate who rose to become club president. The stakes are now so high, that the vast majority of fans can vote but they could not run.